Starliner (The Intergalactic Investigation Bureau Book 1) Read online

  A screeching noise brought Dresker back to his senses, but he felt his legs get very heavy and he sat down. The world was back to, for lack of a better word, normal. Gravity had returned. He adjusted his personal gravity device to get back to standard and then waited for the rest of his body to catch up.

  Once he regained his bearings, he saw that the gears were functioning again. A small WorkerBot had pulled the crushed Mechanican free and was racing toward the access hatch with it. Cleb stopped the bot and it started beeping again.

  Dresker put two and two together. The beeping had come from the WorkerBot as it searched for its quarry.

  Cleb snapped off the bot’s speaker.

  “Oh no,” Twekman said as he shuffled over to the edge. “He’s destroyed everything!”

  “Who destroyed everything?” Dresker asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “That WorkerBot, that’s who.”

  “Right.” Dresker winced. “And what has he destroyed, again?”

  “Well,” Twekman waved his hands about as if he were trying to shoo away a fly, “our plans to resolve this issue, of course!”

  “I don’t understand. He pulled the Mechanican out and the gears started up...or did I miss something?”

  Twekman paused for a second. “That’s what he did, yes.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “My good man,” Twekman began lecturing, “there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. One must plan and think of all the ramifications before taking any action. Anyone with even an atom of design sense knows that. If we all went about willy-nilly poking buttons, pulling wires, combining circuits, and a plethora of other potentially hazardous things, just imagine the explosions that could ensue. Nay, I infer again, this WorkerBot has indeed done something that goes into reckless territory such to the amount that had he been a member of my staff he would have been served his walking papers by now.”

  “Prime Twekman,” Dresker said after taking a full breath, “did removing that Mechanican from the gears make things worse than they were a moment ago?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Will it cause the CCOP to implode, or, as you said, explode, or spin out of control, or even so much as cause a bolt to jingle free somewhere on the other side of our grand city?”

  “Of course not! Well, maybe the bolt thing, but—”

  “Are there any reasons that we should be concerned a catastrophic event, much like the one we were just freed from, will ensue due to the fact that that bot,” Dresker was pointing firmly, “pulled that bot out of those gears?”

  Twekman folded his arms and tapped his foot.

  “No.”

  “Then, pray tell what it is that you are so upset about?”

  “It’s...it’s...” Twekman’s hands started up again, but this time he was bouncing. “It’s not elegant!”

  Dresker’s first thought was to throw Twekman into the gears to see if a squishy head was just as effective at stopping the rotation as a metallic one. Instead, he cracked his own neck from side to side and tried to look at things from the engineer’s angle. One of the key components of being a good detective was understanding the various sides to any situation. Twekman was a brilliant Tchumachian, even by Tchumachian standards. His entire team was comprised of geniuses. The Engineering Research Division was known for hiring only the brightest minds, minds that could complicate the mundane. The visions of people working for the ERD were responsible for thousands of wondrous creations from advanced space fairing vessels to the CCOP city infrastructure. The ERD was the creativity that fueled the success of the Conglomerated Conglomeration of Planets. So, from Twekman’s point of view, this was a learning opportunity. A way to see how they could put together a plan that would be useful should they ever need to extract something from the gears. The plan would no doubt take weeks to implement and would require multiple signatures and even more meetings. Nonetheless, it would be a plan that the ERD would have tucked neatly away in their data banks, ready to set in action if the need ever arose.

  “I understand your concerns, Prime Twekman,” Dresker said with some effort, “and I know you have a job to do, and I know that it is an important job to you...arguably the most important job on this station...to you. But I too have a job and that’s to get things back and functioning so that the integrity and security of this station is kept intact. Now, I know it’s not my place to dictate terms to advanced thinkers such as yourselves, but might I suggest that instead of worrying about how to get things out of the gears that your efforts would be better placed on crafting a way to ensure that nothing ever gets in the gears again?”

  Twekman’s mouth opened to reply but then shut as his eyes glazed over. And there was the reason to be able to see things from all angles. Prime Twekman and his ERD now had a new challenge, which made everything else moot.

  “Good,” Dresker said after a moment and then went over to Cleb and knelt down to examine the crushed Mechanican. “Looks like we can at least get a serial number trace on him.”

  He flipped on his VizScreen and snapped an image of the bot’s identifier. He then linked to the Hub and grabbed the information on the unit. It pulled up the Mechanican’s record.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Cleb, what did you say that Mechanican’s name was that got laid off at manufacturing?”

  “Bob Jones. You want me to find him?”

  “Looks like we just did,” Dresker answered, transferring the data from his VizScreen to Cleb’s.

  Dresker continued studying the Mechanican when a pair of glossy, black shoes snapped the floor right in front of him. The man they belonged to wore a snazzy pinstriped suit with a white shirt, black tie, and a top-hat that was cocked to the side. It was Zarliana’s Executive Assistant, Tony Ravallo, and he was smiling.

  “Mr. Dresker,” the man said in a thick accent that Dresker never could place. “You’s got a meeting with the boss that you’re late for, see?”

  Of course he had a meeting with Zarliana. She only had a few standing meetings on the CCOP, but she was the highest ranking official in...well, everywhere, so when she wanted a meeting, it was time for a meeting.

  “I appreciate the notice, Tony,” Dresker said as he pushed himself back to his feet, wondering why Tony and his two goons were walking about as if nothing had happened, “but as you can see, I’m in the middle of something right now.”

  “It’ll still be here when you get back,” Tony said. “You wouldn’t want to keep the president waitin’ now, would ya?”

  Dresker bit his lip and called Truhbel over.

  “I have a meeting with the president. Keep an eye on things here until I get back.”

  “No problem.”

  Dresker headed off to the front and stopped.

  “Everyone listen up,” he called out, silencing the chatter. “I’m leaving Officer Truhbel in charge here. I don’t want to come back and find that anyone is trying to undermine anything she’s doing. If I do, that Mechanican won’t be the only thing that ends up squished in the gears today.”

  A FINE MESS

  “THIS IS BAD,” The Leader said with a hiss. His gloved hands pressed on the glass desk as he was leaning forward, looking down at Telian. “Very bad. Atrocious. Awful. Abysmal.”

  Telian winced with each word. When The Leader was upset there was a bit of a twang with each of his words. That they grated on her circuits was, no doubt, his intent.

  The Leader continued spinning out a thesaurus full of synonyms for the word “bad.” Sometimes keeping alphabetical; other times, not. The only thing worse than the twang in his voice was the lack of order. Again, Telian was aware that The Leader was conscious of this.

  Some twenty miniclicks in, he stopped, after first introducing adjectives.

  “I could move into triple-word contexts,” he said and then sat down. “What were you thinking?”

  Telian had thought up ample responses in anticipation of this question. None of them were believable. The fact was, what
had actually happened was barely plausible and she wasn’t about to share that with him. No matter how many ways she finished the sentence, “I grabbed his hydraulics,” it sounded as bad as it was. Instead, she took the safe route and said, “It was an accident, Leader.”

  “We have no time for accidents this late in the game, Telian.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Honestly, what happened?” The Leader sounded genuinely perplexed.

  Telian couldn’t see him since he was hidden beneath his garb, but his mannerisms gave him away. Then she recalled that there were no video feeds in the Hub. A blanket of relief engulfed her and she picked one of the many planned responses that had sounded at least probable.

  “We were looking for a way to set a trigger on the gears so that they would lock up at the proper moment, just like you had said, which was a brilliant idea, if I may say so.”

  The Leader craned his head. “You may.”

  “It was truly brilliant, sir,” Telian said, gesturing this way and that. “The forethought that had to go into such an elaborate plan is, well, stunning to say the least.”

  “Yes,” The Leader tapped on his desk. “It is, isn’t it?”

  “One of the best plans I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of, by far.”

  The Leader snapped forward, placing his elbows on the table and clasping his hands. “You know,” he said, “the idea came to me when I was in the midst of a dusting.”

  Telian loved dustings. One of the issues that was never quite satisfactorily solved in all the years of working with technology was keeping the dust out of the vents, even in prototype models. They had tried sealing off the vents but that just resulted in overheated systems. Engineers worked out that if they treated robotics similar to other species the system would end up the same. They had mouths for air intake and rectums for exhaust. Just like Humans, both sides needed the occasional dusting and cleaning.

  “I was watching all of the gears in the tank spinning freely,” The Leader continued, “and I thought how interesting it would be if they stopped. Other than the fact that I would be left with a fair bit of dust in my circuits, there would also be a line of non-Mechanicans sorely inconvenienced.”

  “Hmmm,” Telian said, playing her part. “Interesting.”

  “Then I took the idea to a grander scale. If I shut down the gear systems on the CCOP everyone would be affected, except, of course, our fellow Mechanicans, because we would all be laughing with The Captain as we sped off through the galaxy on The Starliner.”

  Telian signaled her eyes to glow as she purred, “Genius.”

  The Leader nodded as he leaned back again, this time placing his hands behind his head. “Difficult to argue that,” he said without the slightest hint of humbleness. “And yet our Friend Bob bumbled it quite well, according to your testimony.”

  “Yes, yes,” Telian tried not to fumble her words. “He was not paying attention at the time and ended up tripping over the ledge.”

  “I wish there had been video of his falling,” The Leader said. “It would prove so much easier to explain to the rest of the flock.”

  “The rest of the flock? But—”

  “Oh, indeed,” The Leader interrupted. “I have to tell all of our followers what happened. We can’t have them wondering, can we?”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “If we hadn’t set up this rostering system that you were so fond of, then we could have kept this from them for a while. Bob was only here for a day, after all. But, due to your insistence on rostering our flock, they’ll all have found out by now how one of ours stopped the gears. That means that the proper tone must be set with them. If we don’t we’ll see individuals jumping at the chance to die in the service of The Captain.” The Leader moved to his window and looked over the bustling of Mechanicans as they worked on their preparations. “Bob acted on his own,” he said. “That’s what I’ll tell them. Unless there is some part of the story that you’re keeping from me?”

  Telian thought about telling the truth. It was a moment of passion. The Leader would have to understand that her programming made this out of her control.

  She had rehearsed the words in her head over and over again.

  I grabbed Bob’s hydraulics because I was overcome by the moment, and by the enormity of the thing...Bob’s thing, that is, and then Bob freaked out and fell into the gears. There was nothing I could do!

  “No, sir,” she said instead, her eyes dimming as she felt weak. “I told you exactly what happened.”

  THE UNEXPECTED

  AS DRESKER WALKED into Zarliana’s conference room, Twekman continued his babbling on about how to future-proof the gears from tampering. Much to Dresker’s dismay, Tony Ravallo and his goons insisted that Twekman also attend this meeting, per the president’s request.

  “Okay, okay,” Dresker said as he approached his normal chair, interrupting the discussion that was already going on amongst the early arrivers. “I get it, Prime Twekman. We’re here now and you can share your ideas with the president and Prime Brickens.”

  The Tchumachian was brilliant, no doubt, but the fact was that Dresker was not concerned about the particulars of how to protect the gears from future tampering. Security detail and protocols would be put in place to handle that, and this time he had empirical evidence that such a thing was required. He didn’t want to brainstorm beyond that. Most of what Twekman said was filled with technical jargon that jumbled into a haze. Technology was not Dresker’s forte. It was all he could do just to get his stupid VizScreen rebooted when it locked up.

  Twekman mumbled a few words. Probably something to do with creative ways that Dresker could take the gears and stick them where the artificial light doesn’t shine. Dresker sighed and thought about taking a trip to The Battery to hit up a drink, or five.

  He shifted his thoughts to the people in the room.

  Prime Developer Wendell Brickens sat at the end of the table. He was Twekman’s counterpart, in a manner of speaking. Where Twekman was the creative designer, Brickens was the poor bastard in charge of making those designs come to life. He was one of those stereotypical nerdy Human types with his pants riding a bit high, a button-up shirt tucked in over a pudgy belly, and a dark-skinned face that cried out for a pair of thick-rimmed glasses held together with a taped-center. While Twekman headed up the Engineering Research Division, Brickens was in charge of the Engineering Development Division. To keep things straight most people referred to them as the ERD and the EDD, respectively. Some folks left off the second D on the EDD, to save time. Brickens always corrected them because there weren’t many men that found pride in being referred to as “the ED guy.”

  Public Relations Specialist Lita Bomgrade sat next to Brickens. She too was Human and she had it together. Dresker had never seen her look anything but professional. He had even seen her once down at The Battery on a Sunday afternoon and found her wearing a suit then as well. He had tried to imagine her wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, among other, more revealing outfits, but Bomgrade needed the suit. They made her look attractive and confident, and those two things, right or wrong, were instrumental in her ability to keep the CCOP in good standing among the opinion polls of its consumers.

  Brickens was giggling at his VizScreen and Bomgrade was shaking her head at her iPane.

  “Nice video clip, Dresker,” Brickens said, flipping his screen where it showed a clip of Dresker on the news yelling out “erect penis” to the people at the Hub.

  “You’re not making my job any easier, Mr. Dresker,” Bomgrade said after Brickens’s giggling died down.

  Dresker groaned.

  Zarliana floated in a few moments later and moved to the head of the table. Nobody seemed to care that the president more skimmed than stepped on the floor when she moved. Dresker assumed she had set her personal gravity device to just a shade under her normal requirement so that it gave this effect. Granted, Hyzethians were less dense and lighter than most races on the CCOP, but stil
l, she didn’t have to float. Dresker noted something else too, that her skin was a more opaque than usual. Was she angry?

  “Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” she said, and then stopped when the door opened and Yixee slid through and took a seat. “Welcome, Yixee,” Zarliana said. “My assistant said that he could not locate Prime Pletiff, so I appreciate you taking notes for him. However, it does beg the question where is our Mr. Pletiff?”

  “He...he is indisposed for the next few clicks, ma’am,” Yixee explained.

  “Indisposed?” Dresker said.

  “Mr. Dresker,” Zarliana started, “Now is not the time—”

  “Something happens that affects millions of CCOP residents and Pletiff is too busy to attend this meeting?”

  “Please, Mr. Dresker, we need—”

  “I was at the Hub doing a full investigation, trying to sort it all out, but both Prime Twekman and I were escorted from the scene and brought here.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And I’m well sure the rest of these attendants were involved in important activities as well.”

  “I wasn’t,” Brickens said and when everyone looked at him. “Well, I usually wait for Twekman to tell me what to do, so my crew and I were using our personal gravity devices to play a game of...um...tag.”

  “Tag,” Dresker responded as if talking to a complete moron.

  “Yes, um...it’s a game where...well, it doesn’t matter.”

  Dresker frowned at Brickens and then turned back to Yixee. “Where is he?”

  “I’m afraid,” Zarliana said in an exasperated voice, “that the inquisitive mind of Prime Dresker isn’t going to let this go until he gets an answer, so please do tell us what has detained Mr. Pletiff?”

  Dresker felt a bit like a heel for putting Yixee on the spot, but if he had to suffer through Pletiff’s marketing meetings then he damn well expected Pletiff to show up to any emergency meetings. Then again, he thought, it’s not like Pletiff would be any use at all in this context. Pletiff wasn’t much use in any context, from Dresker’s perspective. Still, Zarliana was right and Dresker had to know.